For the past ten years or more, there has been a growing awareness that “environmentally
harmful subsidies” (EHS) are the worst of both worlds. They hurt the environment, while at
the same time they quite often do not serve our welfare in a more general sense. As a
prominent newspaper put it: “the no-win madness of perverse subsidies”.

Despite this growing awareness, little progress has been made to abolish EHS or to redesign
them in such a way that negative environmental effects are avoided while upholding societal
gains in other areas. The guilty parties are – in our view – governmental indolence and the
pressure from those who profit from subsidies. There are, of course, always short term
beneficiaries.

This is reason enough for environmental NGOs to enter the arena and forward a strong case
for phasing out EHS – as some have already done in recent years. This publication is intended
to stimulate and assist environmental NGOs in achieving their objectives.